Pandemic gave boost to distributor of local produce
Jul. 13—March 2020 was a month of global pivoting.
For Nina Yozell-Epstein, it was the month her Squash Blossom Local Food produce distribution to individual subscribers soared from 25 canvas bags a week to 250 in three weeks. At the same time, the 30 restaurants she provided produce for vanished overnight with state-imposed closures.
“Our business pivoted and grew tenfold in response to the pandemic last year,” she said.
Until the coronavirus pandemic, Squash Blossom was primarily a wholesale supplier for restaurants, providing locally grown produce with a small number of retail customers seeking “Blossom Bags.” Since starting Squash Blossom in 2015, Yozell-Epstein has sought to have retail subscribers as the main source of her income, but restaurants remained the backbone of her business until mid-March 2020.
“I’d been trying to spread the word about Squash Blossom,” Yozell-Epstein said. “It may have taken 12 years to get to this point [without the coronavirus pandemic]. It really saved me a decade of work. We were on a steady growth path. This gave me the jolt we needed.”
Revenue more than doubled from $125,000 in 2019 to $275,000 in 2020 with the subscriber count now steady at about 175 and about 20 restaurants returning.
Yozell-Epstein started the pandemic as a one-woman show with a helper. She stored produce in a cooler outside the Dragonstone Studios (the former Desert Academy on Camino Alire) with access to the Dragonstone common area to assemble the couple of dozen Blossom Bags.
In the opening weeks of the pandemic, with business soaring, Yozell-Epstein suddenly needed warehouse space. Luckily, considerable vacancy exists at Dragonstone, and she leased a 600-square-foot space to assemble Blossom Bags. She also hired two part-time employees.
“The quicker you can adapt to change and be a savvy business person, the more I can achieve my mission,” Yozell-Epstein said.
Her mission is to provide reliable income for farmers, provide healthy food to the community and strengthen the local economy.
“Now we are equipped for the volume to do more than 500 Blossom Bags,” she said. “Give me what you got and I’ll rise to the occasion.”
Joseph Wrede, owner of Joseph’s Culinary Pub, values the produce Squash Blossom provides.
“Food that grows locally tastes better. It’s not rocket science,” he said.
But the real value Yozell-Epstein provides is getting the produce from farm to chef.
“It’s really good to have someone take care of the business part,” Wrede said. “The relationship with farmers is complicated. She’s good at that. … How it’s handled is extremely important. If you grow it, it doesn’t matter if you can’t get it to the chef.”
Yozell-Epstein faced a rush of new customers in the second half of March 2020.
“I think it was a matter of people becoming conscious about their food security,” Yozell-Epstein said. “The shelves were empty and we didn’t know when it’s going to come back.”
Her business is not exactly a storefront operation you drive by all the time. But locals quickly found Squash Blossom.
“Once you start Googling, we pop right up,” Yozell-Epstein said. “People were asking on message boards, ‘Do you know where I can get food from local farmers?’ People said, ‘I went to high school with Nina.’ “
Squash Blossom has eight drop-off points in Santa Fe where Blossom Bags are deposited each Thursday afternoon for people to pick up. In the early months of the pandemic, Yozell-Epstein had to evolve her business one step further.
“I arranged home delivery because people didn’t even want to go to the drop-off,” she said.
The canvas Blossom Bags are filled with five types of produce. Last week’s bag contained spring onions, beets, greens, Lacinato kale, lettuce heads and a spicy green mix. The prior week had cherries, cilantro, cabbage, parsley and salad mix.
Each bag gets a “Nina’s Note” with the provenance of each item and either a recipe, how it was grown or stories from the farms.
Blossom Bags cost $28 as a one-time purchase or $25.20 per bag for subscribers, who can sign up for a weekly bag, every two weeks or monthly at squashblossomlocalfood.com.
Add-ons are available for additional charge, including eggs, jam, mustard, Kakawa chocolate and pickles.
Santa Fe writer and content strategist Cameron Siewert received her biweekly Blossom Bag on Thursday.
“I love getting stuff I don’t expect,” she said. “Ah, beets. What can I do with beets? I have a recipe I saved from the New York Times: lentils, beets and cheddar cheese. I’m going to try that.”
Siewert started ordering Blossom Bags 1 1/2 years ago on a weekly basis, but after starting a backyard garden last summer, she’s now getting the Blossom Bags every other week.
“The thing that comes to my mind immediately is the salad mix,” she said. “You get so much more variety of greens. You just don’t get that at the supermarket. From Squash Blossom, it’s onions and garlic on steroids. They have so much flavor.”
